Mugabe press bill invites sanctions

Robert Mugabe has virtually guaranteed that international sanctions will be imposed on Zimbabwe by pressing ahead with draconian legislation allowing his government to ban newspapers and stop journalists reporting.

The government party, Zanu-PF, resubmitted its press bill to parliament yesterday with only minor changes, five days after it said it would revise it following a storm of foreign and domestic criticism.

At the time Mr Mugabe assured southern African leaders that Zimbabwe's lively independent press would be allowed to continue to publish. But the revised bill gives the information minister the power to decide who may work as a reporter and which newspapers may publish.

A clause which made it an offence to spread "fear and despondency has been dropped, but the bill retains the offence of spreading "rumours or falsehoods under the guise of authentic reports".

Foreigners with residence permits will be allowed to work as reporters, but only with the information minister's approval.

The decision to press ahead with this bill, on the heals of tough new security and election laws which are widely seen as part of the govern ment's strategy to steal the presidential election in March, will reinforce demands for the EU and Commonwealth to impose selected sanctions on Zimbabwe's leaders.

The two organisations meet separately next week.

But the president's more immediate concern is to force the legislation through parliament today.

Mr Mugabe is so concerned about the unrest in Zanu-PF provoked by the bill and the other new laws - one effectively bans the right to strike - that he dispatched party whips to harangue MPs yesterday.

The government was forced to withdraw its original press bill after a revolt in parliament last week led by Eddison Zvobgo, once one of Mr Mugabe's closest allies, now a key obstacle to his re-election.

Fifteen years ago Mr Zvobgo, a Harvard-trained lawyer, rewrote the constitution to give sweeping new powers to the president. For a long time he was seen as likely to succeed Mr Mugabe, but his undisguised ambition led to a rift.

In September 2000 Mr Zvobgo attacked the government's seizure of white-owned farms, saying: "We have tainted what was a glorious revolution, reducing it to some agrarian racist enterprise. We have behaved as if the world owes us a living. It does not."